This invention relates to a one-piece molded wheel which is useful on a wide variety of vehicles.
There is a need for relatively small wheels which can be cheaply manufactured and which have sufficient strength to effectly function over a long period of time for use in a number of applications, such as, e.g., a wide variety of small vehicles, such as lawn mowers, toys, and carts. Of the wheels which have previously been used, metal wheels are expensive to make, heavy, and require a tire around the outer periphery. On the other hand, many plastic wheels which have been previously available have had insufficient strength for most of the above-enumerated uses.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,604,756 to Gruber discloses a plastic wheel for domestic and industrial use in which a single molded member has a hub and a rim connected to the hub by an imperforate sinuous ribbon to provide radial support therefor. The wheel is designed to be used with an annular tire disposed on its rim. Thus, the Gruber patent basically discloses a two-piece wheel and tire combination which requires an assembly step before the combination is ready for use.
A number of other patents disclose combined wheel and tire combinations. For example, Belgium Pat. No. 642,417 discloses a wheel similar to that disclosed in the Gruber patent. U.S. Pat. No. Des. 192,417 to Hultersturn also discloses a combined wheel and tire having an essentially cross-shaped spoke arrangement supporting a rim which supports a tire. U.S. Pat. No. 2,684,099 to Henry discloses a tire and wheel combination in which the hub has axial dimensions greater than the axial dimensions of the tire, and the spokes comprise a continuous, corrugated sheet extending from the rim to the hub. U.S. Pat. No. 922,161 also discloses a one-piece wheel having a continuous sheet between its rim and its hub, wherein the sheet is corrugated on lines extending radially from the axis of the wheel and the corrugations are of gradually decreasing depth from the hub to the rim. Similar one-piece wheel arrangements are shown in Australian Pat. Nos. 247,211 to Thompson et al., and 240,075 to Thompson.